Churches target City Hall’s gay rights ordinance

This post by staff writer Abe Levy originally appeared in the San Antonio Express-News’ faith and religion blog, Pray Tell.

By Abe Levy

Should the city of San Antonio add “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” to its policy protecting categories of people from discrimination?

The city council will take up the question next month. Here is a story I did earlier about a group of evangelical leaders raising questions and objections to the draft city ordinance currently under review to add these two classes to the current policy.

The evangelical group say free speech and religious liberty would suffer because many citizens favoring traditional marriage would potentially be in situations where they had to violate their conscience, such as having to rent an apartment to gay couples or allow transgender people to use rest rooms at a place of business.

The draft ordinance’s author, city councilman Diego Bernal, questions why any faith group would not want further help for people to avoid bias and abuse in society. And he points out “religion” remains a protected class in the current and proposed policy.

The matter, of course, is not isolated to San Antonio and reflects the growing attention and progress of national and state policies supporting such protections.

But I also recently came across this story in the Associated Baptist Press laying out a similar, current scenario in Frankfort, Ky. Phoenix and many cities in Idaho are among the municipalities to approve such policies.

And here’s a story from the Wichita Eagle from last year in which one city in Kansas reversed an ordinances seeking to add this controversial language and another defeated a similar measure.

It seems probable that more and more cities will take up this issue and have the same debate that San Antonio is having.